A renowned doctor wrote an open letter to Anurag Kashyap after the filmmaker refused to put an anti smoking warning in his upcoming movie Ugly. Anurag Kashyaphad filed a PIL at Bombay High Court back in December 17, challenging the Cigarettes and Tobacco Products Act, after the censor board did not allow his movie to be released. The director also claimed that the rules violated his fundamental right to speech and expression.

In the letter, senior cancer surgeon of Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, replied to some of the arguments which were made by Kashyap in his petition. Talking to a leading daily, Dr Chaturvedi said, “I am dismayed. The Supreme Court has directed the censor board to make filmmakers display warning in every scene that shows people smoking. Every day, nearly 3,000 people die due to tobacco-related cancer. At TMH, we receive 50,000 new cases annually and most of them are tobacco-related cancer patients.”

When contacted, Kashyap gave a scathing reply, saying, “A person who makes patients sign a form before surgery, saying the doctor is not responsible, wants to hold my film responsible for the social ill of smoking and make it my responsibility. That’s an irony. I don’t want to respond to people who don’t know what my fight is about and talk through their a**.”